Terming it as a “historic achievement”, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced on October 13 that Assamese has been recognised as a “classical language.”
Sarma said that in a week-long celebration from November 3-9, the people of Assam will express their gratitude to the Prime minister of India for the recognition given to the Assamese language. The celebratory programmes will also include honouring the stalwarts who contributed to the upliftment of the language.
In its meeting held on October 18, the Assam cabinet passed a resolution thanking the Prime Minister for the same. It is the Union cabinet which gives the final approval needed to categorise a language as a classical language. Assamese got this recognition alongside Pali, Prakrit, Marathi and Bengali.
However, collecting evidence, historical records, making a case in favour of the language and ensuring that it fulfils the criteria listed by the ministry of culture before it is declared as a classical language, is a painstaking task.
This task has been primarily accomplished by a non-governmental institution, the Assam Sahitya Sabha (ASS). The ASS is the apex literary body of Assam.
While the Sarma-led BJP government in Assam is leaving no stones unturned to celebrate the occasion and take credit for the achievement, some of its recent decisions related to the Assamese language have also resulted in criticism.
The critics have questioned the government’s goodwill towards promoting the Assamese language citing the fact that government-run Assamese medium schools are being closed by the same administration.
A report from earlier this year says 161 Assamese medium schools are being closed due to poor enrolment of students. These schools are being merged with other schools.
The flak drawn by the state government is better explained by Lurinjyoti Gogoi, the president of Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) and a leader of the Assamese nationalistic political stream.
“The government is busy harvesting political mileage, while the truth is that it had little or no idea how to accomplish the task of according Assamese the classical language status. It was the ASS and especially Kuladhar Saikia, the brain behind the entire exercise, who made it possible,” Gogoi told The Wire.
“We have examples of other classical languages that have suffered, such as Sanskrit. My question to the government is how can you secure the language by closing thousands of Assamese medium primary, middle and senior secondary schools?” said Gogoi.
Gogoi cited examples to allege that the state government’s efforts for protecting and promoting the language are not sufficient.
“The first instance is the closure of the schools and the second is the chief minister’s statement wherein he once said that it is difficult to become doctors and engineers studying at Assamese medium schools. The third instance that raises questions on the government’s goodwill is that it introduced English as the medium of instruction for science and mathematics from class three, which was withdrawn after wide scale protests. The government model schools at block levels are affiliated to CBSE, and will be in English medium,” said Gogoi.
“Do these actions reflect love and respect for the language? Moreover, the Vandya international school, a prominent international school in Assam that is run by the Chief Minister’s wife, has only English as the medium of instruction as far as we know,” added Gogoi.
Role of the Assam Sahitya Sabha
Saikia, the former president of the Assam Sahitya Sabha, is also an ex-DGP of Assam. A Fulbright Scholar and a prominent Assamese writer, Saikia has previously been honoured with the Sahitya Academy award.
In 2021, when he was the president of the ASS, an expert committee was constituted to study the origin of the Assamese language.
“Our main emphasis was on bringing in people from various disciplines such as archaeology, music, art, literature, linguistics to determine the roots of the Assamese language. For me, studying such a crucial matter has to be multi-disciplinary,” Saikia told The Wire.
“From the archaeological evidence we knew that a rock inscription written in Assamese at Nagajari Khanikar village in Golghat district dates back to the 4th century. In addition, the folk songs, music, copper plate inscriptions, literature, manuscripts etc. enabled us to connect the dots about the development of Assamese to the ancient times,” Saikia added.
On March 19, 2021, the ASS submitted a report titled “Memorandum for Granting Classical Status to Assamese Language” to the Union ministry of culture. In 2023, the Sahitya Academy apprised ASS that the report was placed before the “Linguistic Expert Committee” and will be studied by its members for consideration of the proposal.
By this time, Saikia’s tenure as president of the ASS was over, but he was asked to pursue the matter by the present office bearers of the ASS. On July 9 this year, Saikia wrote a letter to the Prime Minister seeking his intervention before Assamese was declared as a classical language on October 3.
“It gives me immense pleasure that such a milestone has been achieved by the Assamese language,” said Saikia.
Started in 2004 during UPA I, the process of granting classical language status requires that the language in contention of the title meets strict conditions laid by the ministry of culture.
However, the task of examining whether a particular language fulfils the criteria lies with Sahitya Academy. The conditions include the language required to have a history of at least 1500-2000 years and the existence of a body of ancient literature and texts that should be considered as valuable heritage by multiple generations.
Documenting history
According to Manjil Hazarika, an archaeologist and a faculty member of the Cotton University, who was also involved in the process of studying the history of Assamese initiated by ASS, the rock inscription of the Nagajari Khanikar village that Saikia mentioned is the oldest known inscription from Assam.
The inscription dating back to 4th-5th century CE is a land grant. Another such crucial inscription is at the Nilachal Hills of Guwahati, besides the famed Kamakhya Temple, which dates back to the 5th century CE.
These inscriptions not only serve as evidence of the existence of the Assamese language in ancient times, they are also sources of valuable information about the history and social structure of those times.
“The inscriptions contain history of the dynasties during whose reign they were written. For example, the Nagajari Khanikar inscription that speaks about the land grant system, may subtly hint towards early state formation as well as development of the economic system. This is a significant knowledge base apart from the literature and texts,” said Hazarika.
Hazarika added that copper plate inscriptions have also been found in Assam. Metal and stone sculptures belonging to different periods of history also contain texts, at times mentioning the names of those who patronised such sculptures.
From the inscriptions of the Brahmaputra Valley, one can understand the evolution of the script from Gupta Brahmi (eastern variety) to Kamarupi script and ultimately to the Assamese script that is in use today.
An early 13th century rock inscription near Guwahati, called the ‘Kanai Boroxi Buwa’ (fishing of Krishna) bears testimonies of the defeat of Bakhtiyar Khilji in Assam.
Apart from inscriptions found in Assam, indirect evidence of the language’s existence in the ancient times include the Allahabad pillar inscription dating back to the 4th century, during the reign of Samudragupta of the Gupta dynasty which refers the Kamarupa and Doboka kingdoms of ancient Assam.
“The 7th century clay seal of Kumar Bhaskarvarman, the last ruler of the Varman dynasty, recovered at the Nalanda archaeological site is also evidence of a flourishing history of Assam from the early part of the Common Era,” added Hazarika.
Hindrances in recognition of Assamese as the language of Assam
However, the Assamese language had its share of struggles, both in the colonial period and post-independence.
“Assamese people are overwhelmed at the declaration of the classical language status as they had witnessed historical hiccups over more than a century on the development and continuity of their language which bear their identity,” said former ASS president Saikia.
The historical hiccups that Saikia mentioned can be traced back to 1836, when Bengali was made the official language of the region based on Jenkin’s report, which said that Assamese is a sub-language of Bengali. Before that, since the time of the 1826 Yandabo treaty till 1836, the British used Persian as their official language.
“The time was void of any leadership who could even raise the demand that Assamese should be the official language,” said Arabinda Rajkhowa, a language expert and a faculty member of Assamese department, North Lakhimpur College (autonomous).
Bengali was the medium of instruction in schools, offices and courts as the colonial rulers believed that Bengali as the official language would ease in running the administration in Assam.
Gradually, the demand of making Assamese the official language in Assam grew. Anandaram Dhekial Phukan submitted the demand in the Mill’s report, said Rajkhowa.
Along with a section of Assamese scholars such as Hemchandra Baruah and Gunabhiram Baruah, the missionaries had a profound contribution in Assamese becoming the official language of Assam .
“To establish that Assamese is a unique language, Nathan Brown compiled a grammar book and Miles Bronson compiled a dictionary in Assamese. They were also involved in evoking submission of memorandums to the British government to demand Assamese be made the official language,” said Rajkhowa.
In 1871, memorandums were also submitted separately by committees based in Nagaon and Guwahati to the British government in favour of declaring Assamese the official language and George Campbell was given the task to analyse the matter.
After Campbell’s report, the colonial rulers decided to make Assamese the language in offices and courts (1872) and schools (1873) of Assam. Even after independence, two spates of movements rocked Assam – one in 1960 (language Movement) and the other in 1972 (medium movement).
In both the movements, the conflict was with Bengali, the seed of which was sowed during the colonial regime.
Impact of the CAA
In recent times, Assam has seen widespread protests against the implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA). Experts say that the CAA will pose a cultural and linguistic threat to Assam.
“With CAA in place, Assam will have to take the extra burden of mainly Bangla speaking foreigners who have migrated to the state over a period of 43 years. This is a natural threat to our language. We cannot forget the historical fissures and neither can we be sure that complexities similar during those times will not arise again in near future,” said AJP president Gogoi.
“The brouhaha over implementing Biplab Sharma committee recommendations regarding Clause 6 of Assam Accord also raises apprehension about the intention of the government and especially the Chief Minister. He has categorically said that Barak valley with a large Bengali speaking population along with 6th schedule areas will be kept out of the implementation process, which does not comply with Biplab Sharma committee recommendations. On the contrary, the committee recommended to include Barak valley as well the 6th schedule areas,” Gogoi added.
Recently, the state cabinet has decided to implement the recommendations of justice Biplab Sharma committee formed by central government in 2019. The high-level committee was formed for implementing the Clause 6 of the Assam Accord signed in 1985 which marked the end to Assam Movement. The clause 6 of the accord aims to provide Constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards to the Assamese people.
The key recommendations of the Biplab Sharma committee included the definition of Assamese people and reservation for the same in parliament, assembly and the local bodies as well. A constitutional amendment is necessary for this purpose and Chief Minister Sarma has cited this as a “difficulty” and said that 40 out of the 67 recommendations will be implemented by April next year.
The Sharma committee also recommended that the Assamese language be kept as the official language throughout the state as per the 1960 Assam Official Language Act with provisions for using local languages in the Barak Valley and the Hill districts and Bodoland Territorial Autonomous district. Hill districts (Dima Hasao and Karbi Anglong) and the Bodoland Territorial area come under 6th Schedule.
